


Saturday Morning

by mamakashi



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-07
Updated: 2013-06-07
Packaged: 2017-12-14 04:37:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/832824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mamakashi/pseuds/mamakashi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>And we've got nowhere else to be but here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saturday Morning

It is still dark when the sheets shift beside me and I roll awake in a confused moment. Where I expect to find a desk, I see only wall and empty space. I quickly deduct that I am in your bed, and though this space is less familiar, the smell of you wrapped around me, the curve of your body fitted against mine, practiced angles and shared heat, is enough. You grunt softly in your sleep, the arm draped over my waist pulls me closer, possessive. I am content to drift back to sleep, your exhales soft and even on my neck.

Morning comes, and I wake to see you sitting, rubbing your eyes the way you are accustomed to doing, daylight scattered in your hair. I tug you down before you can reach over me for your glasses and you blink at me from your pillow, green eyes still fogged with sleep. Your lips begin to part with protest, but I know you well and I hush you, palm against cheek. Each moment ought to be productive, but this, too, is productive when I read the stresses that have been wearing on you all week, that you have kept from me. You say you don’t wish to burden me and I insist you burden me too little.

It is not words that we exchange, but looks. The evenings of my week ring with the sound of your voice, and your voice only, so it is fine that we are silent now. All that matters is the reassurance of proximity, my senses filled with you, and yours, me.

We lay until shadows have shortened and shifted, and we rise to what’s left of a morning, brief and lazy. As usual, your pantries are pitifully stocked and your kitchen shows few signs of use, but I make do. I am amused, as we eat, that a man could look so grateful for the simplicity of white rice and salted mackerel.

Later, we stop by the market. I know a head of cabbage will only be left to wilt and brown in your refrigerator, so I drop a bag of pre-washed spinach leaves into your cart. I am sorely tempted to comment on your selections, but we have traded no small amount of words over this in the past and I acknowledge that you are a grown man—a grown man who makes poor choices. I can only combat your packets of instant meals with apples and pears, equally convenient. It is irony that you, as a doctor, are the least concerned with your own health, but I know work is wearing and most days you are simply too exhausted to care.

Every corner you look, Tokyo is filled with couples. Maybe it’s in subconscious mimicry of our surroundings that our hands search for one another’s as we stroll.

Dinner is a carefully planned affair on your part, for you always like to point out how my diet suffers when I am visiting. I wouldn’t have minded cooking, but your pride is something to consider, so I allow you to take me out.

The booth is private and entirely too spacious. I slide into place beside you, mostly out of a desire to fluster you, which has become increasingly difficult to achieve over the years. You spare me a look of incredulity before resignment, and your embarrassment is clear when our waitress seems perplexed by our seating arrangement. Over steamed red snapper and shitake mushrooms, we speak in hushed voices.

“It would benefit you more if we were to live together.”

“I would strive harder to meet your needs, then.”

“Don’t.” I laugh. “I only meant to say that we should consider marriage.”

You lower your head, your glasses slipping with the movement. “I already have.”

We settle in for the night to watch a late NBA match, but you find more interest in the buttons of my shirt. Before long, I have uttered your name in all its tonal variations and you have marked my throat for the world to see. Your head pressed to my chest, my heart thumps between us. This is real, real enough. The truth told by my eyes and felt by my fingers cannot be shattered, flawless. Absolute―so unlike these nebulous dreams, in which I hold no domain over.

In these dreams I know not who or what you are, only that your absence manifests as a hollow loss. I walk until I crawl, and beneath my fingernails you collect like my dead mother’s ashes. Centuries and lifetimes pass, and the earth beneath my belly grows colder yet. It is only when I rouse, when I nudge into you and grasp you, secure, that I know the name of my agony. I keep these dreams to myself, for I know they would alarm you, and you would struggle to know their meanings. But I’d tell you, as I tell myself, they are baseless in that they are dreams. Only dreams.

“What are you afraid of?” You stare me wide-eyed in the dark though blind as you are. You have seen enough of my waking moments in which I shake the terror of these illusions.

There was a time when I hunted for answers in the slight of your movements and the shadows of your tight-lipped expression, while you struggled, less equipped to read me. Time has leveled the playing field, and time has made you bold.

“I’m not going anywhere.”

“No,” I agree, releasing you. I never asked for such reassurances, but I kiss you for it anyway.

In the morning, you never see me slipping a train ticket to Kyoto into your coat pocket, but you know it’s there. I count down the next five days.


End file.
